I felt myself surrounded by millions of pages, by worlds and souls without an owner sinking in an ocean of darkness, while the world outside the library seemed to be losing its memory day after day, unknowingly, feeling all the wiser the more it forgot.

The war crimes of the Bush Administration are being forgotten. Despite our efforts, truth and justice are sinking in an ocean of darkness, the world outside is losing its memory of those war crimes and forgetting about the people who suffered and died because of those crimes against humanity.

I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.

My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.

The Truth must never be forgotten, the fallen must always be remembered, we must remember them all, we must remember what has been taken away and what still remains, and the meaning of it all, because remembrance is wisdom and wisdom is empowerment.

A million pages of lies have been written since 9/11 and they’re still being written, but the Truth still lives, its light shines on and we will change the world with it. The Truth is too big to fail. It’s within us, it’s all around us, there is soul power in it, spiritual strength in it, ultimate empowerment in it.

The most powerful forces in this world are the ones that cannot be seen, they cannot be bought and sold on stock exchanges, they cannot be filibustered or sequestered, they cannot be arrested by the police or negotiated away by that idiot in the Oval Office.

Those forces are awakening, and the Truth will be heard, it will be read, it ill be lived.

Every book has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.

Every book has a soul, and every song has a soul, the soul of the songwriter who wrote it and the soul of those who hear it and sing it and live and dream with it. Every time it is sung, every time it is heard, its spirit grows and strengthens.

The spirit of Imagine is transcending, there is no limit to its appeal, no limit to the unity it can forge across this world, no limit to the emancipating power of its message, no limit to the enlightenment it brings.

Militarism is a legacy of ashes, imperialism is a legacy of dust. We aren’t pawns on the corporate chessboard of capitalism, we aren’t commodities, we aren’t cannon fodder, we are the People. We are the Soul Power of Change, we are the pages in the Book of Life and the music in the Song of Peace, we are the hope of the past and the promise of the future.

This is our world, and we are going to light every distant corner of it with the Truth, and the Truth will heal it and sanctify it, and greed and oppression and war will haunt us no more.

Oh gee,sorry – it is Pete Seeger singing ‘We Shall Overcome” (with an audience of course) – might be possible to Google it better. In it he gives a beautiful explanation of one of the last verses, in honor of the young people who inspired ‘us oldsters’. As they did so recently in OWS. And so it goes. On!

Isaiah, thank you for this diary and especially for posting part of Tomas Young’s letter. I just came across that on Facebook earlier today. I also watched the first half of The World According to Dick Cheney; it’s two hours but I could only stomach one hour’s worth. It was chilling to see just how long that malevolent motherfucker has been one of the chief architects of our imperialist empire. And here’s the thing: he doesn’t want us to forget. (Watch the clip in that link and you’ll remember more than you ever wanted to.)

Hi, hotflashcarol. I hope Tomas Young’s letter is being read by a lot of people on Facebook and elsewhere. You made it further through that Cheney documentary than I did, I could only take about 20 minutes of it.

I so enjoy your thoughts, Isaiah 88, and the crowd that joins in the comments here. Thank you so much for taking the time to put your thoughts together as you do so well, for us.

I have been on the road and have not been reading much this last week, and I have not yet read The Letter, but I will do so now. I am so grateful for the social media that helps these sorts of ideas to move toward the mainstream. Mr. Roberts has made an important statement that will have some due, as is needed. I hope he goes to his final rest knowing that his words have had an important impact. Not for sale, indeed. Hooray for those things that are not traded and are priceless.

A wonderful post, Isaiah. Clearly we all hold different images of the residue of Empire and war. But for me it’s blood and tears, and among the brown and black people we’ve murdered around the globe, also depleted uranium. It percolates in the soil and water and walls of ruined buildings; it enters bodies of the living and will kill or maim countless generations to come. It never dies or dissipates.

Ash and dust would be more benign imagery to hold; I almost wish it were so for me.

Thank you for this post, Isaiah88. I read Tomas Young’s letter yesterday, the 10th anniversary of our War Crimes. It was a hard day. I thought of all the people I knew, good people, who would never dream of reading Tomas’s last words. Who would never let Tomas “harsh their bliss”. Some days it’s a struggle to not hate the callousness of people you call friends.

Bless you, Isaiah, for telling the truth of war-and especially the poignant letter of Tomas Young. All too many veterans have suffered hideous wounds, physical and psychological, from our Nation’s ill conceived wars, wars created by our crowd of avidly war loving chickenhawks, wars which have resulted in nothing of benefit to the 99%.

IMO, the psychological injuries are even more grievous, in that so many cannot heal from the horrors of combat. It does not help that we are detested by so many of the self righteous, smug in their own perceived moral superiority, and are all too willing to ensure we know it. Generally, these people declaim from the safety of a keyboard.

Granted, if one is in a position to profit from America’s burgeoning arms industry, wars are great. Now we also have the exploitative Halliburtons who profit off of tasks which the Military traditionally performed ourselves.

As for the VA, it is commonly said that their motto is “Delay, deny, and hope I die”…

Blood and tears, ashes and dust, the immediate and long-term consequences of systemic deceit and corruption. Love and truth are the only way to put an end to it. We know that, and we will put an end to it.

Thank you, openhope. The callousness of so many people angers me too, it’s like they’re afraid to care any more, they’ve withdrawn into their own immediate circle of family and close friends and don’t want to see what’s happening beyond it. It’s hard to overcome a mindset like that, but we have to keep trying.

the psychological injuries are even more grievous, in that so many cannot heal from the horrors of combat. It does not help that we are detested by so many of the self righteous, smug in their own perceived moral superiority, and are all too willing to ensure we know it

Thank you, nonplussed. We need a real VA, real elections, a real government, and a much stronger commitment to activism in order to achieve that.

Yes. As the spouse of a Vietnam War veteran I will say that “No one knows what the hell a war veteran is going through at times “. You just kind of hold back and watch. With love. That said, many of us civilian folks have crosses to bear, and we deserve equal kindness and recognition.
Kindness and Recognition.
Love and Acceptance. We’re all only Here for a short while.

Which is probably the exact opposite philosophy of the Koch brothers and their evil Illuminati species.

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